All demos download for this update is available in two parts. The bulk of the demos are here. This is the .dz I posted a few days ago so that people could see the demos. The demos that have arrived since are available here. So if you already downloaded the "yohoho" .dz just get the second one but if you haven't seen any demos yet get them both. Simple, eh? :-)

Cor, what a palaver. Blimey, Guv, and no mistake. In retrospect I suppose that "Let's add seven new specifically designed for speedrunning maps at the busiest time of years when everyone except that lazy twat Morfans is going to be away..." was not the brightest idea, update wise, we've ever had. Because you guys have done us proud and flooded us with some incredible demos on the new maps. We've not had this many demos to post in one update since the infamous "Fleck trawls cdrom" incident back in '98.[1]

But I've tried my best to keep on top of things. I failed, but I tried. The topic in #qdq has been kept pretty much up to date with the latest records so if you're one of those that has worked for hours or even days to produce a demo that is already beaten I do urge you to drop in and check the current times as often as you can. Who knows, someone might even talk to you!

Right, on with the demos. There's so many I won't be able to comment on them or even list those that arrived too late to be records but I'm sure you're all sick of the sound of my e-voice by now anyway.

dmc1m1

• Easy Runs
  • Big, bad Brent Wise returned to the archive after several months absent and started things off with an 0:22.
  • Then the first of todays SDA newcomers (well, he's entered a RotW contest and I've got some bunny comparison demos knocking around my hard drive that I really must get around to posting soon) Mathias Thore was the first person to perform the bunny-slope jump off the middle column and got a 0:19.
  • A cleaner run from Kay Berntsen improved that to 0:18.
  • Ripah then did the second slope bunny onto the barrel to get 0:17.
• Easy 100%s
  • Blackout was the first again. In fact the only one. He did a neat 0:25.
• Nightmare Runs
  • We only had 2 Nightmare Runs and they both arived TODAY within 50 minutes of each other. And they were both in 0:20. Unfortunately for Thomas Bergendorff it was Mathias's demo that arrived first. Keep an eye on this man. If he keeps on making demos he's going to be one to watch in the future.

dmc1m2

• Easy Runs
  • When someone called Sidd showed up in #qdq recently I figured "oh, here's Alex". But no. How we all chuckled when some time later I realised it was in fact another new guy called George Dickeson. He sent in a 0:25 to get things going.
  • Which Ivan Vladev soon improved to 0:21.
  • And then Blackout sneaked another second for 0:20.
  • And so it stayed for a few days until Lodis sent in this amazing 0:18.
• Nightmare Runs
  • JMad started with a 0:23.
  • Blackout responded with a 0:22.
  • JMad recaptured the record with this 0:21.
  • Then Lodis blew everyone away with first a 0:19.
  • And then an 0:18.

dmc1m3

• Easy Runs
  • Sidd was the first to use the rocket launcher and powered his way to a 0:14.
  • Ripah took a different route and got 0:13.
  • Then he added a little more boost to get 0:12.
• Easy 100%s
  • Blackout was again the only 100%er on the map and turned in a damned fast 0:25.
• Nightmare Runs
  • Blackout again with an 0:15.
  • Then this morning Lodis did a rocket jump off a spawn to get straight to the highest platform and exit in 0:11.

dmc1m4

• Easy Runs
  • It was fun to watch this run evolve. Sidd started off by gren-jumping to the silver key trigger at the start and then running the expected route in 0:44.
  • Ripah ignored the silver key and instead used a grenade and the rocket launcher to fly all the way up to the gold key. 0:40.
  • Much IRC discussion followed until Ripah ignored the rocket launcher and performed a double-grenade-off-an-ogre jump instead. 0:28.
  • He then realised that his route back from the gold key to the exit was bloody stupid and so went the sensible way and took the time down to 0:24.
  • Then along came Martin Selinus who used Basil's grenade placement (see Nightmare Run below) and Ripah's route to get an astounding 0:22.
• Easy 100%s
  • Basil de Vries came up with a fun route for the Easy 100% and by a staggering coincidence it's also a very fast route. 1:26.
• Nightmare Runs
  • Orbs was the only one insane enough to do the double-blah-blah on Nightmare skill and scored a 0:27 with some clever grenade work.

dmc1m5

• Easy Runs
  • Sidd had all the tricks, but ran them in the wrong order. ;-) 0:35.
  • Blackout ran the standard route in 0:28.
  • So did Ripah, but slightly slicker at 0:25.
  • Then Orbs showed what a Dutchman can do with a couple of purple balls and got 0:24.
• Easy 100%s
  • Orbs was happy just to break the one minute barrier and stopped at 0:59.
• Nightmare Runs
  • Vore balls move quicker on Nightmare allowing Orbs to get 0:23.
  • But Lodis just moves like a fucking bullet through this whole 0:20. *GASP*

dmc1m6

• Easy Runs
  • The first person to find that it was possible to blow yourself up to the exit-reaching trigger_push was Nolan Pflug who used a grenade+rocket+rocket to get there in 1:34.
  • Orbs couldn't be arsed to wait for the GL to appear so he did the much trickier rocket/slope+rocket combo giving him an exit time of 1:20.
  • Is it possible to curl into the trigger from the start? Probably not unless you're someone like Timo. But as Robert and Rickard Axelsson showed it IS possible for the second person in to aid the first person's curl with a shotgun boost to exit in the ridiculous time of 0:03.
• Easy 100%s
  • JMad again with a deathly 1:59.
• Nightmare Runs
  • Orbs reprised his Easy Run in the slightly faster time of 1:19.
• Nightmare 100%s
  • And the only Nightare 100% on the new maps was from JMad who managed a slightly messy 2:05. :-P Right. Next time I post all my NH tablefillers. You have been warned!

dmc1m7

• Easy Runs
  • Blackout fought his way to the top of the stairs and used the "position yourself and fall to the exit" trick (which I didn't even realise you could do) to get 0:28.
  • Ripah used faster bunnies and the "position yourself and jump to the exit" trick to get 0:25.
  • And Lodis used stupidly fast bunnies and a maniacal "bunny from the top of the stairs round the corner to the exit as if all those rocks weren't there" trick to get 0:22. I'm not just saying this, I honestly think that Bergie's demos on these maps are some of the best demos I've ever seen. The sheer speed of his bunnies and accuracy of control are worthy of a Selinus/Szalontai/Nieminen. He's always been among the top runners but these demos just blew me away. Nice one, Thomas.

And now for the non-DMC demos.

• Justin Fleck continues his push towards 1000 demos by taking Thomas's Nightmare 100% of carnage by thirteen seconds to 1:51 in a display of quad killing and "how didn't he fall in the lava?" platform jumping.
• Also, Lodis fought back and recaptured his a2d2 Nightmare Run from Optic by two seconds to 0:44. Back to you, Justin?
• Optic was also in coop action with the ping pulverishing power punch that is Evan Wagner. They improved Evan and Cameron's Easy 100% of The Realm Of Black Magic with some really impressive play from both players that made it hard to believe at times that they weren't on a LAN. They managed to get 7:46 but decided that had a few too many flaws in it and so made a 7:34 as well.

Which only leaves me to give you two more Startling Speedrunning Statistics. Unfortunately they're a little haphazard because I can't remember what order all the above demos arrived in. But somewhere above you will find both the 6666th regular speedrunning demo submitted to the archive and also the 2000th seperate record on a map. Holy hades, guys. We've created a monster here!

[1] Well, it was probably '98. Somewhere around there anyway and I can't be fooked to check. :-)

For those of you that were expecting some Christmas Eve demos I'm afraid that I won't be able to post them today due to a serious accident I suffered earlier. I was unexpectedly involved in a rather nasty collision with a whisky bottle as I was peacefully proceding along the highway. Luckily the glass bottle miraculously sort of phased through me but the contents got lodged in my bloodstream which is making any kind of typing a real challenge.

So if you want to know what the fastest times are on the new maps then go join #qdq. And if you already know then it's probably the prudent thing to spend some time working on your December Madness entries. After all, it's not like your going to have anything else to do in the next few days...

But seriously folks, whatever your festival I'd like to wish you a happy and joyous one on behalf of the whole of TeamSDA. Remember that we love you even if no one else does. :-)

CHEERS!

All demos download for this update is available here.

As this is the season of giving, what with the winter solstice fast approaching (and probably some other Jonny-come-lately religions have festivals around now too), it is appropriate that we celebrate this time with a load of gifts. So not only do we have a fat stack of demos for you we also have some new maps. But not just any old "new" maps, it's an entire new episode custom made escpecially for speedrunning. Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it!

I think we'll start with a little coop action from Evan Wagner and Justin Fleck.

• First they went for a leisurely climb up hip3m1, the notorious Tur Torment. The rigours of performing a Nightmare 100% were just a little too much for Evan and so sadly he perished with two seconds to go in this dramatic 1:58. (Ninety seconds faster than the SP time.)
• Then they caught a baaad dose of marathon madness. What started off as a bit of a mess around turned in to a properly planned, well executed Easy 100% of the whole of Quake in the excellent time of 35:35, nearly twenty minutes faster than the Single Player time and fifteen minutes faster than the EH4. :-) Were they happy? Well, there were a few howlers. The Vaults of Zin, for example, was a total mess and there was a hilarious, if slightly embarrassing, moment at the end of Ep1. So the next night the improved it by 1:59 to 33:36. NOTE: The .dz that Nolan uploaded for this marathon is corrupted so it won't be included in the all demos download and isn't available until he re-uploads it (probably this evening).
• Both marathons started in The Elder World and both were improvements over the current record. The first one was done in 10:31, forty-five seconds faster than Nolan and Thomas, and the second one in 10:01, thirty seconds faster still. Pfff. Surely you could find an extra second or two here to get below 10:00... ;-)

E-mail from the big city. Part fourteen : Sex and the City.

Hi Guys,
    Oh man! I sure am having a great time here now that I've got to know a few people and am learning some of the differences between Odense and Copenhagen.
    For example, one of the biggest differences is in people's attitude towards sex! Believe it or not, here in the city you are allowed to have sex with people that you're not even related to!
    In fact, I met this one girl the other day, she was quite tall with a deep voice and a big, bushy moustache (which seemed to be quite the fashion in the club we were in) and she said that if I buy here enough strong drink she might let me perform an intercourse on top of her! WOW!!! AT LAST I MIGHT FINALLY DO IT FOR REAL!!!!

        Stubby.

Looks like Thomas Stubgaard has settled in nicely. Luckily for us he also found the time to improve his Nightmare 100% of The Wizard's Manse by another second to 2:02. A fine looking demo all the way through. Killing the last monster at the start via RJ is always to be encouraged...

And now for the first of two Startling Speedrunning Statistics. Who has made the most id level demos? Nolan? Jozsef? Ilkka? Well, if you guessed at the third name you'd be correct. Ilkka Kurkella currently has recorded an amazing 163 demos on the id levels. But Stubby's demo above puts him on 154. So only 10 more to go for Thomas to take the record. Assuming, of course, that Ilkka doesn't make a devastating comeback and up his total in the mean time. I know which one of them I'm cheering for. Ilkka! Ilkka! Ilkka! ILKKA!

Our second SSS concerns Optic. Everyone knows he's done more demos than anyone else in the history of the archive, but do you know just how many? Including the four below it's 976. Speculation has been running for a long time regarding whether he'll ever reach the magic 1000. But now, to big grins and shouts of "GO FLECKER!" he has officially announced that he's going to try and push for that big four digit number. In the best SDA tradition I would like to try and add a little tension to this Herculean record attempt and am prepared to offer a bounty of FOUR POUNDS STERLING to anyone that can beat him to the thousand. Yes folks, we're talking cold, hard cash here for anyone that can record 1000 demos before Justin... :-)

• After taking his Nightmare Run of a2d2 in the last update it seemed only fair to add to the insult and improve Thomas's Nightmare 100% too. He did it in brutal style by twenty-one seconds to 2:32.
• Semms he just can't leave arcane alone either.
  • It was "Bye Bye Bergie" for the Nightmare Run as he improved it by eleven seconds to 1:36.
  • And in a spookily similar coincidence he improved Thomas's Nightmare 100% by eleven seconds to 2:21.
• It may have a cool name but armorgod is a total trouser when it comes to speedrunning. That's not stopped the Flecker from hacking another nine seconds from Ilkka's Easy 100% to take the time down to 3:37. The maps ends with "Go back and defeat your greatest enemy". Unfortunately on this map your greatest enemy is likely to be boredom. :-)

Okay, one last thing before we move on the the maps. I've just been informed by a reasonably reliable source that there's a new release of JoeQuake ready for your download. It probably includes new features such as lights, sounds, guns and stuff. Console variable. That kind of thing. ;-)

And now. Ladies and Gentlemen. I am happy to announce the release of the world's greatest custom episode. Oh yes indeed, it's time to welcome DeathMatch Classics by Connor Fitzgerald!

DeathMatch Classics (part 1) is a new single player speedrunning episode built from a set of conversions of "classic" DM maps in the style of the DMxSP maps or aerorun. For full details see the .txt that comes with the DOWNLOAD.

• dmc1m1 : Basewalk by Preacher. Please call your demos dmc1_xxx.
• dmc1m2 : Acrophobia by American McGee. Please call your demos dmc2_xxx.
• dmc1m3 : Bloodrun by ZTN. Please call your demos dmc3_xxx.
• dmc1m4 : DeutschMaschine by Gandhi. Please call your demos dmc4_xxx.
• dmc1m5 : Domination by Alex 'Pingu' Moore. Please call your demos dmc5_xxx.
• dmc1m6 : #endif by Yataze. Please call your demos dmc6_xxx.
• dmc1m7 : Lost Entrance To e2m6 by John Romero. Please call your demos dmc7_xxx.

Huge thanks to Connor for converting these levels and also to TeamSDA for testing them. And of course I award a wave of my magic todger in the face of all the original mappers that gave permission, encouragement and even a little help to the making of this episode.

Just to get things started here are three pretty bad coops by Me and my brother Nik. All Easy 100%.

• dmc1m1 in 0:25.
• dmc1m2 in 0:40.
• dmc1m3 in 0:24.

Now you crazy kids run along and enjoy yourselves.

I am replete.

All demos download for this update is available here.

What a week! Visitors all over the house, birthdays, parties, birthday parties, snow (which "luckily" the sleeting rain and gale force winds have now removed) and just all round general carnage. All of which means that I've been neglecting my SDA duties which is just a bad thing for everyone: You because you've had to wait a whole week to see the demos; me, because there's a huge pile of them for me to have to wade through now. Not that that's a problem per-se, you understand, as the quality makes them a pleasure to watch. Just the time it tales, people, the time it takes. ;-)

We'll start with all the demos that are NOT in some way affiliated with Optic, presented in such a way as to build up a picture of a full set of male genetalia...

• First we have TeamSDA's very own "Shaft of Death" Thomas Bergendorff improving both the runs on the looong, looooong jawbreak.
  • He showed us what a little modern day power bunnying can do to an old record and improved Marlo's Easy Run by nine seconds to 1:58.
  • Much the same for the Nightmare Run except that more enemies in his way meant he turned the power up that little bit higher and improved Marlo's record by eleven seconds to 2:18.
• Next a sweet little coop from Robert and Rickard Axelsson who, because of their legendary testicular fortitude, are occasionally known as "The Balls of Sweden". They used a big SSG boost on dnspq1 to squeeze in a one second saving over the single player Easy Run to 0:07. A great run by Robert.
• And to finish off our speedrunning phallus we have Amrik "Total Bell-End" Kochhar who has once again returned to the fold with a pretty stunning demo, improving Alex's Easy 100% of bbelief1 by one second to 1:39.

And now on to Justin Fleck and all his little American friends. I suppose if we were keeping the theme from earlier going then this lot could be the pubic hairs. :-) Anyway, here we go...

• He started of by giving a thorough hoofing to the Nightmare records on hip1m5 by improving each one not just once, but twice.
  • It was large scale monster dodging as he pounded through the Nightmare Run three seconds faster than Ilkka to get 1:42 and then one second faster than that at 1:41.
  • Then he tore apart another Ilkka record, the Nightmare 100%, by a massive thirty seconds to 3:15. I've been waiting to se this record improved for a long time, ever since I gave up trying to do it myself, but I wasn't expecting to see a thirty second improvement. Or even a thirty-four second improvement to 3:11.
• The level of Egyptian love, mcm01, enticed him in for some 100% action.
  • Marlo's Easy 100% fell with barely a shudder as he caressed a further seven seconds from the level to get 1:36.
  • Then the total bastard destroyed my Nightmare 100% by forty-seven seconds to 2:02. HARUMPH! ;-)
• His next target was discord where he went stark, staring crazy in his mission to beat all of Ilkka's old records (as long as they don't look like being too difficult)...
  • First he tidied up the Easy 100% by four seconds to 1:26.
  • And then he let his aggression run away from him and beat the Nightmare 100% by twenty seconds to 1:54.
  • Since he was there, and to show the world that someone is still taking on the hard Nightmare Runs, he improved Carl-Johan's Nightmare Run by three seconds to 0:49.
• To prove the point about satanishly tricky Nightmare Runs he improved Thomas's a2d2 record by one second to 0:46. Possibly the most manic demo in today's update and a great demonstration of greased-marine running.
• Optic has also been involved in regular coop play with the one and only, the living legend, YES! it's Evan Wagner! The guys are stoically working their way through the levels ensuring none are wanting for an EH2.
  • I'm sure you've all guessed that one of them was discord. 1:01.
  • And since disturb is alphabetically the next level not to have a 2 player Easy 100% they did that too. I'd never actually played this level before but after watching these arse kicking demos (and I'm not just saying that. A lot of effort obviously went in to getting the time down to 0:59 and it really shows) I'm now convinced that this is a hubby, lava filled, platform jumpy level. Yes indeed. It's a level alright. No doubt at all.
  • For your information, I started that last sentence eight hours ago and left it just before "a hubby". I have no idea what I intended to say so have just wildly filled in the rest of the line. I apologise if the sentence lacks impact.
• Justin then went looking for another level while Windlash persuaded his old coop buddy Cameron Engles to join them for a massacre-a-trois. What he found was ikspq1 and what they did was a three man Easy 100% in 0:45, five seconds faster than Jesse, Ilkka, Fab and Attila's EH4!
• How do you top that piece of MadCoop action? Why by getting Flecker and Waggy to bug Nolan Pflug into reforming the original American Trio, that's how!. Their target for this comeback gig was Azure Agony and it was a sell-out success with all the monsters dying in just 1:05. Obviously Nolan moaned all the way through and there was lots of bad spelling where numbers were substituted for letters and other such behaviour but it's good to see the whole squad back in action. :-)

That's all for today. Stay tuned for new profiles, new demos and maybe, just maybe, some new maps in the next couple of days.

Scrub it!

All demos download for this update is available here.

Time to crank it up again, people. It's been a reasonably quiet week this week demo-wise, but we still have a large shaft of lovelyness to wave in your face so don't you go a frettin' about that.

One possible cause of that is, of course, the start of our December Madness contest. Or should I say "contests" as with five brand new maps to run on it's the only contest in SDA history that is bound to have at least one thing in it for everyone to hate.

Let's start the demos. Dane Plachetta was not totally happy with his recent hip3m1 Easy 100%. He knew he could do it a second faster so he kept trying and in fact improved it by two seconds to 1:27. But it still wasn't a perfect run so he kept trying as he knew he could improve it by one more second. But once again he suprised himself and improved it by two seconds to 1:25. Even in this demo you could see his boost to the 100H secret was a little too strong and he knew that if he did that smoother he could make it down by one more second. Suprise! He did a near perfect boost (and a slightly different kill on the stairs) and actually improved it by two seconds to 1:23. Predictably he thinks it's possible to improve by one more second, but he hasn't managed to do it yet. I have my doubts though and am going to give this a Must Download anyway.

The saga of the Nightmare 100% of dm6sp continues, but now that a new face has joined the race I think I'm well and truly out of it..

• It took a few days of trying before Ivan Vladev wrestled the record back off of me by three seconds to 1:00.
• Time for another Australian skill fiend to show his face. Connor Fitzgerald was mildly amused by the battle between Ivan and myself and decided he'd join in. However, with this 0:50 he's probably killed off all the opposition unless some newe blood gets involved.

Our final five demos of the update come from the new coop duo of total unknowns who have been tearing up the tables for the last couple of weeks. They are called Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner and the are, apparently, American. Here are their demos presented alphabetically.

• Firstly that old favourite arcane. I was very suprised to see that this was the first ever coop on this level but they did an adequate job of the Easy 100% getting 1:38 and then a very good getting 1:35.
• It was a similar story for hellctle, except this time I'm not at all suprised that this was the first coop as it's not really a coop friendly map. Sweet demo, though. Can't complain at an Easy 100% in 1:14, not if you wish to stay fashionable and popular.
• Next they did the Easy 100% on jawbreak. I really can't understand why anyone ever would consider speedrunning a level like this originally. Not that it's a badly made level or anything like that, it's actually very good. But it's a large base map with no shortcuts at all and was added to the archive when Rikkert sent in his 2:30 Easy Run back in '98. A two and a half minute Easy Run? Personally I'd have said to myself "this map isn't very runnable, I'll try a different one". Still, takes all sorts I suppose. I digress. Easy 100% in 2:05.
• Lastly another Easy 100% on another non-cooped map, trr. No, not The Rabbit Run, it's The Ruiner's Revulsion. A funny little map but a nice piece of cooperative work for a face punching 1:11.

And so we come to the end of another update. My brother, Fat_Eddie, is coming up for a visit today so if you're very lucky, and we can stay sober long enough, you might be treated to some very, very low quality coops in the near future. :-)

Oh yes indeed. The time has arrived. The final part of the Speed Running Championship 2003 is now officially underway. Go here and join in with our December Madness.

Once again, I say go here!

Warning! This is not an update. I repeat. This is not an update. Due to lax security one of the demos that was in the all demos download managed to escape before it was posted on the update. So if you downloaded the all demos update and found a demo that made you think "WTF??" it was probably this one...

Dane Plachetta has honked all over Carl's hip3m1 Easy 100% with a five second improvement to 1:29. Some of the improvement is from the wild rocket-play that's fast becoming a Dane trademark but the biggest saving was a new, much quicker, way of getting the quad that I'm amazed no one has found before. :-)

All demos download for this update is available here.

First, a correction. In the last update I erroneously stated that Ivan and Ilian had done an Easy Run of aerorun. The fact that there was a bloody great shambler stood by the exit should have been enough to alert me to the fact that their 0:07 was actually a Nightmare Run. Just as well for them that it was, too, as Martin Selinus and Anders Nordensten did the Easy Run in 0:06. Looking at the exit time it seems that even this might be improvable. Oh, and it also seems that Ilian hasn't just got one name, he's in fact has the very serious and not at all potentially amusing name of Ilian Duckoff.

Plenty of Nightmare action this week on dm6sp.

• Robert Axelsson improved his Nightmare Run by one second to 0:29 with the aid of some jumpy fiend damage.
• The Nightmare 100% turned out to be a real battle between Ivan Vladev and myself.
  • I began things with a 1:20 tablefiller.
  • Ivan saw me post this in the #qdq topic and produced a 1:10 about 10 minutes later.
  • "Right you bastard," I thought, "I'll get you for this!" and quickly responded with a 1:09.
  • Now things were starting to get tricky. Due to the unpredictable behaviour of certain monsters improvements were getting frustrating, but Ivan persisted and came up with a 1:04.
  • I tried for an hour or so and after several 1:04s of my own and a couple of 1:02s with a kill missing... I went to bed. Next morning I got a 1:03 on my second or third attempt.
  • As you'll see from these demos, under a minute is quite possible if you can get the monsters to stop being so damned STUPID!!!

Kimmo Polvivaara used some of that famous aggression of his to knock a further twelve seconds off his Easy 100% of dm3sp. He got the time down to 1:24 using more boosts, more risks and less ammo. A-fuckin'-men to that!

If you like receiving e-mail from us then here's what you do. Over the course of several weeks improve a record by eight seconds, BUT as you're working on it save every one second improvement as you go and then when you're finished send in eight one second improvements in eight seperate e-mails. I can guarantee you'll get a mail from Nolan before the last one's even gone cold in our in-tray. :-) And to prove this point that's exactly what Dane Plachetta did with his eight second improvement to the Easy 100% of hip1m3. The final 1:23 is hugely impressive, apart from a slight case of zombie resurrection right in the depths of the mine. It's still easily worth a RECOMMENDED.

Our final demo today (again, not the final one we have, but the final one that was in when we called time on this update a day and a half ago :-)) is the Nightmare 100% of edom by Justin Fleck that I alluded to at the end of the last update. It clocks in at 2:47, a full forty-five seconds faster than his previous time, proving that although he's been absent for two years he's merely been mellowing and improving, not rotting and decaying.

Talking of rotting and decaying, I had a sneak preview of Evan Wagner's first ever map yesterday and I have to admit I was impressed. Not impressed enough to want to add it to the archive, of course, but still impressed. Expect to see it released in a week or so's time. :-P

Toodle-oo!

Due to popular suggestion the all demos download will now be available here, at the start of the update. Now you can click on it and read the rest of the update while it downloads rather than forgetting it was at the bottom, individually downloading all the demos as you go and then swearing when you reach the bottom and remember that there's been an all demos download at the bottom even though it's been there for the last couple of years. ;-)

If ever proof was needed that SDA stays in your bloodstream longer than than a crack/heroin cocktail then the return of the next two gentlemen is surely it. One we haven't heard from in a long time, the other we haven't heard from in a very, very long time. They started off with some coop action and I guess if you wanted a more ol' skool coop duo then you'd have to get Radix to persuade Jeff Preshing to make a demo with him...

Evan Wagner saw Justin Fleck on ICQ the other night and persuaded him to come out of retirement and make a demo with him. Have they still got what it takes? Well, if you watch this Easy 100% of edom in 1:38 you'd think they'd never been away. (For example look at Evan's first telefrag or the effortless jumping along the narrow ledge above the lava while shooting in the opposite direction from Optic.) Welcome back, guys.

Then they single-playered it up for a bit. windlash is back up in the weezy (I've waited over two and a half years to say that! I still don't know what it means but I just really wanted to say it back at Evan. It was the whole reason I joined SDA. I can rest now...) and improved his new coop partner's Easy 100% of edom to 2:17 just to prove who was the daddy and who was the bitch.

But Papa "You're my bitch now!" Optic improved that by another five seconds as soon as he heard about it to 2:12.

Then they settled their differences with a few more coops.

• In a misplaced burst of enthusiasm they went for the Easy 100% of armorgod, a level which manages to be huge and open while at the same time is incredibly fiddly and annoying, and turned in an impressive looking 2:24.
• And finally they did the very linear (at least, it is the way they played it) Easy 100% of epoch. Optic looked to be suffering from the lag a little bit but they still beat the SP time by fifteen seconds to 1:25.

Next today we have Martin "I don't do marathons any more" Selinus doing his second marathon in as many weeks. This one is hugely impressive but he seems very dissapointed with it. He improved his Easy Run of The Netherworld by two seconds to 2:46. Sure, there were a couple of little slip ups and the odd monster getting in the way but he still did the slope bunny to the window, a running gren jump off a zombie over the trigger, the gren jump out of the water, the double grenade off the wall round the corner into the deathknight jump to the trigger, etc, etc, etc (not to mention all the "lesser" tricks) all in one continuous run. Personally, I'd rather be an optimist than an optimumist. (Whatever that means.) :-)

Moving on up, we find that Kimmo Polvivaara is still reaching for that higher ground. His next step up is to make a big forty-four second improvement to my dm3sp Nightmare 100%. It's a mad map to Nightmare on, and Kimmo made this improvement to 3:03 by simply out madding me.

We've got some hefty plans for new maps coming up, but in the mean time I thought it was about time we added the last couple of contest maps to the tables.

• Firstly we have forrit by Ivan Vladev from the Forgotten Ritual contest. Please call your demo forr_xxx if you think you can beat any of the contest winning records or want to do a coop.
• And secondly we have aerorun by Connor Fitzgerald from the Rune Run 2 : AeroRun contest. Please call your demo arun_xxx if you think you can beat any of the contest winning records or want to do a coop.

Sorry for not listing all the current records on those maps, I'm afraid I couldn't be frigged to type them all out. You see, because Michael is taking a well deserved rest in the pub and Thomas is having penis surgery and Nolan has spent the last few days locked in his room with an illegal immigrant called Mario I had to add the maps and do the tables and upload, etc, by myself. Never let anyone tell you that SDA isn't a team effort just because I hog all the updating glory. However, since this time I did do all the work myself I honestly found myself blanching at the though of having to paste in another eight hyperlinks that were only a click away anyway.

And just to show you how quick off the mark some people are, Ivan Vladev and SDA newcomer Ilian (that's all the info I have. Just "Ilian". Maybe he only has one name just like Sting or Pele or Jesus or Phil or Marylin Manson) have done a coop on a map that was only added twenty seconds ago. They did the Nightmare Run of aerorun in 0:07, three seconds faster than the SP time. Very impressive for a first demo...

That's all. I've just realised I missed an Optic demo that arrived this morning but I'M NOT BLOODY CHANGING THE UPDATE NOW!!!

Lovin' ya.

We've had some real e-mail problems over the last couple of days so if you've sent us a demo and it doesn't appear in this update or the next one then sorry but you'll have to resend it. Not our fault, but then nothing ever is. :-)

Prepare for the madness. The sheer, sheer madness that is dm6sp...

• How did he do it? How did Dane Plachetta improve Robert's Easy Run time by another second to 0:07? With a very tricky (like one success every hundred tries tricky) slope jump, that's how. Optimum
• Still, at least Robert Axelsson has the Nightmare Run to console himself with. He managed a pretty good 0:29, as did Basil using a slightly different route. Basil took the nailgun from the lava, meaning he started killing the fiend one second later than Robert but killed it maybe two seconds faster... Robert's return route was way faster. :-)
• But Basil de Vries won't end the update without a record on this map. He did an Easy 100% table filler in 0:45.

We should, of course, have demos on our other new map now but I think I'll use Kay Berntsen as a gentle transititon into the gmsp3 demos, a way of throwing a cheap insult at someone and also as a demonstration of just how varied some peoples demos can be...

• So let's start off with his one second improvemnent to Denis's royalwar Easy Run. This is all fraction fighting and getting the boost angles as near to perfect as can be to produce a 0:30 that is probably optimum for this route. I would rate this demo GOOD.
• In contrast, this Easy Run tablefiller of gmsp3 in 1:40 is... well, actually now that I watch it again it's not too bad. For a tablefiller. He obviously uses a very long route for the final section and gets stuck a few times but it's still okay. But becasue I want to call Basil "ugly" in the next paragraph and the whole good/bad/ugly joke wouldn't work if I didn't rate this demo as BAD.

All the rest of our gmsp3 demos are from Basil de Vries, who I would have to rate as UGLY. [1] He started off promisingly, got better, and then went right down hill. :-)

• He started by improving the Easy Run to 0:56 using a HUGE shortcut to chop off most of the watery section.
• But he found a different, very subtle, shortcut and took the time down even further to 0:41. Very impressive indeed. Maybe a double grenade jump from the floor could take you straight over the wall? Maybe you could kill the ogres more aggressively? I certainly hope we'll see at least one more mprovement to this run...
• Then he moved on the do tablefillers of the 100%s. Starting with a rather convoluted but fun route for the Easy 100% which gave him a time of 10:40. I think this map could be fun to do a Mad Coop Easy 100% on if a group of people out there are looking for a way to kill several hours...
• Finally he muddled his way through the Nightmare 100% in the probably-not-optimum time of 19:12. It's possible to shave a few seconds off this time by, for example, not spending two minutes trying to hunt down the last scrag and then wandering around in a daze trying to remember how to get back to the exit. :-) Still, respect where it's due. Basil did this demo and YOU didn't! :-)

It looks like it's time for another flurry of demos from Kimmo Polvivaara, which is always nice to see. For those who have not made a study of this fascinating creature the habits of the Northern European Running Polvivaara are as follows: make some demos; get distracted by real life; disappear for 8 months; find some time; make some demos; get distracted; and so on in a continuous loop until he gets tragically run over by a tractor in 2007. Here we have his first demo, otherwise known as the "I'm really rusty so I'll do a tablefiller" demo, the Easy 100% of dm3sp in 1:36. A nice route and some smooth killing and jumping at the end.

Thomas Bergendorff has made another improvement to his "flying through the void" Easy 100% of nesp10. There's some big changes to the already twisted route and a new trick or two to give him a very smooth 1:23.

And we'll finish off the demos with some premier coop action from Robert and Rickard Axelsson.

• There's not much you can do to speed up the Easy Run of sgodrun2 except for Rickard to boost Robert to the rune as quickly as possible and then for him to go play with fiends in the lower level lavapools while he waits for Robert to exit in 0:32, one second faster than the SP time.
• The Easy 100% of dnspq1 is a different matter altogether. They split up at the start and Robert hammers the rest of the map while Rickard fists the nasty shambler and exits in 0:22, fifteen seconds faster than the SP time.

That's all for today, we've already received enough new demos for another update so expect another update before the weekend's out. Including demos from a couple of faces that we haven't seen for quite some time...

One final little thing. There's been quite a few new faces around here in the last few months so I really think it's about time people sent us in their profiles. Remember, anyone who has sent a demo to SDA can, and should, have there profile listed on the profile page.

And that is all I have to say.

All demos download is available here.

[1] Okay. Probably wasn't worth all the wait and build up. Can't win 'em all. :-)

Another contest screeches to a halt with all the smoke, sparks and fireworks you'd expect. And once the broken carcasses of exhausted runners are dragged out of the arena it's time for the long, slow process of seeing who's won what to begin.

Thankfully, you don't have to worry about all that because you have me to do the worrying for you. Which means, of course, that you can just head over to the AeroRun page and marvel at the skillz on display.

Congratulations to Timo Nieminen on his victory in the Easy Run, Dane Plachetta for his win in the Nightmare Run and Martin Selinus who took both the Easy and Nightmare 100% wins.

I'll update the Championship Ladder within a couple of hours of now, post a huge pile of demos in a day or two and have the final contest in this series ready for release... soon.

Live long and prostrate.

I think it's now safe to post the demos. Well, mwh thinks it's safe and since he did the actual work I guess he should know. But before we get to them I'll just post a quick set of links for the other bollocks that's been going on in the last few days.

• Metroid Prime : Radix running around pretending to be a young lady in a metal suit : Go here.
• The Dimension of the Gibbed : Slightly silly Quake movie : Go here.
• AeroRun Contest : Ends Sunday midnight CET : Go here.

Right, that's all very well and interesting but what we really need are some demos. So let us begin with the Easy Run of the brand, spanking new dm6sp...

• Pif de Mestre sent in a 0:13, but by then Robert Axelsson had already sent in his own 0:13. Nice ball jumping, gentlemen.
• But the lava-ball jump could be done quicker, and Connor Fitzgerald should this in his a 0:12, but by then Robert Axelsson had already sent in his set of improvements. First to 0:12, then to 0:12, then to 0:12, then to 0:12 and finally to 0:12. Hmmmmmm.
• But as it turned out, you don't actually need to wait for the big red guy to boost you to the key, as Basil de Vries showed us in his 0:09, but by then Robert Axelsson and already sent in his own 0:09.
• With a little fraction fighting Dane Plachetta took this time down to 0:08, but by then, you guessed it, Robert Axelsson had already sent in his own 0:08.
• Robert Axelsson, boss map. I don't suppose we should have expected anything else, really. :-)

Speaking of Dane Plachetta, is it possible this guy's getting even better?

• He went back to hip1m2 and improved his own record by three seconds to 1:48 with some mad routing and slick play. One slight mistake near the end but I don't think it would have got him that extra second...
• Not many people have the stones to own a Marvin demo, and I suppose a one second improvement isn't an owning anyway. But he did take the dm3sp Easy Run crown using a new way to get up to the gold key and took the time down to 0:26.

It's been a while since we've seen Hannu Kankaanpää, but it's always a pleasure to see him back. Last time I spoke to him he said he wouldn't submit another demo until he was able to take a record from a total loser with one of his really old demos. Unfortunately for him he wasn't able to do that so instead he took the royalwar Easy 100% time down to 1:30 with a demo he made eighteen months ago. Seven seconds faster than me.

Time for some mad quad-boosting action, courtesy of Kay Berntsen and that fun little weirdo map, trinity. Denn had both Run records in, 0:22. Ripah rode the grenade just that bit harder and improved the time to 0:21 on both Easy and Nightmare. Sweet as a pineapple enema!

With all the cool runs recently on his DMxSP levels I suppose it was only fair that Basil de Vries got in on the action. He filled the gap for the Nightmare 100% of dm2sp in the very good, but hardly optimum, time of 1:15. Monster cooperation is certainly needed in the big room...

Do you know hat time it is? Time for several fraternal coops!

Robert and Rickard Axelsson sent us a demo that wasn't a record. To make up for this foolish behaviour they made this well-oiled machine of an Easy 100% of dm1sp in 0:27, nine seconds faster than the single-player time.

Still on a roll, I'm glad to say, are rising contenders Pif and Luc de Mestre.

• They filled the blank royalwar Nightmare 100% spot in 1:25, only eighteen seconds slower than their Easy 100%.
• And they also improved their own real Easy 100% by seven seconds to 1:23 with a whole new set of routes. This is good, proper coop play. Way to go fellas!

Our final coop is from yet another set of brothers. Or it least it would have been if Martin Selinus and Anders Nordensten had had the decency to share the same parents. As it is they aren't actually related and have ruined this whole "coop brothers" section of the update. I'm not going to complain too much, though, as anyone who improves an id marathon, especially one like a thirteen seconds improvement over Sergi and Jordi's The Elder World Easy Run, doesn't deserve too much grief. 3:01. So there we are. No grief for this pair at all. I won't even repeat the rumour that someone told me the other day that "Uppsala" is Swedish for "I like to kiss other gentlemen on the buttock cheeks. Oh yes, this is indeed completely true".

It's all about respect...

SPOILER: Why didn't Robert's 0:08 get an Optimum? Just wait until next update!

All demos download is available here.

Hello, everyone. Due to a few technical issues we've been unable to bring you any new demos for the last week. This is sad and deplorable but strangely and arousingly inevitable. Still, we should have the issue solved in a day or two so stay tuned. I still think it's only fair for me to apologise to Martin and Anders and Dane and Ripah and Robert and Rickard and Pif and Luc and Hannu and Basil for the delay in posting their excellent demos.

But this delay doesn't for one minute mean you should stop sending demos in. No, in fact it means you should send more than ever! And to keep you all amused in the meantime I'll round up all the other news that makes this site so god dammned great!

Of course, I'm going to start with a reminder that if you haven't seen it yet, go watch The Dimension of the Gibbed : The Movie!. Comments so far have been overwhelmingly positive, which has made me very proud and very erect. But more (and more and more) feedback is always appreciated.

Now, for the next item of big, big news we have something rather different, but oh so very special from SDA's very own Nolan "Lord of Radix. Hmmm. That's a bit long. Just call me "Radix" for short." Pflug. It ain't Quake, but it shoo is speedrunning and it shooo is an impressive piece of work. It's been three months in the making but he's finally completed an "all items, normal skill" run of Metroid Prime in 1:37! (That's hours and minutes, not minutes and seconds...) Go here for details and downloads, but be prepared for a little wait because it's fucking HUGE!

What else was there? Oh yes! Let me just remind you (or tell you, if you've just stumbled onto the site looking for the Gib thing or the Metroid thing) that the latest contest ends THIS SUNDAY so be sure to get your aerorun entries in before the deadline. Everyone knows AeroWalk and everyone knows how to make the Quake marine walk forwards. So there's no excuse for anyone not to send a demo in! (Apart from "I didn't want to.") ;-)

Is that all we have for you? Hell no! It's new level time! I've had this little muthafukkah sitting around on my PC for the last couple of months so it really is about time it was released. It's the final part of Basil de Vries's conversions of the original DeathMatch levels. It's called, not suprisingly, dm6sp and is a rather original twist on Tim Willits's DM masterpiece. Get it here or get all six together here. Please call your demos dm6x_XXX. This also means that you can now submit marathon runs over all six maps. Please call these demos edmx_XXX and ndmx_XXX.

And if that wasn't enough on the mappage front we also decided to add Glassman's latest masterpiece, GMSP3. It's a huge, beautiful map and, as you can read here, Glassman very kindly released a new version with a couple of changes to make it runnable. So for the love of God please someone do some decent runs on this map otherwise I'm going to look like a right cunt. Please name your demos gm3_xxx. (Note: Make sure you map is called gmsp3v2.bsp. If it's just called gmsp3.bsp then you need to get the new version!)

And finally, I recently did an interview with Dobberman for GameSpot.cz in order to pimp our humble site to every Czech Quaker and gamer possible. So if you speak Czech, or just want to take a look, go here and tell me what I said.

That's probably it for now. Demos to follow as soon as we can. :-)

Welcome one, welcome all! It's time for yet another in our highly acclaimed series of Speedrunning Movies!

It's been a long time coming, so sorry to those that are in it that they had to wait so long to see their runs in movie form, but hopefully the wait will have been worth it. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to give to you....

Actually, since there may well be some new readers here I think I'll take the opportunity to pimp our latest contest, based on the highly popular deathmatch classic "aerowalk". Yes, folks. Go here and run your little hearts out!

...where was I? Oh yes. It is my pleasure to give to you The Dimension of the Gibbed : The Movie!